My favourite point (as summarised by Intelligence Squared) is: “Data should be used to guide the design, rather than design being based on fashion or what the technology offers. Content-oriented design is necessary, as the point of information display is to assist analytical thinking.”

Some found his talk a little ‘rambling’ and complained that he was just reciting from his notes, however it’s worth noting that he is an academic, not a public speaker, so perhaps we should forgive him for such things! Any guru’s followers can often get weighed down with the minutiae of what they say, rather than focusing on the underlying principles they are attempting to communicate. It’s these key principles (such as the one mentioned above) that made the talk a success for me, as I think much of it reinforces my views on what good UX design should be. He had some very good examples and interesting graphics to illustrate his points (Minard’s the poster of Napoleon’s march on Moscow will end up on our wall!).

We failed, however, to get our copy of Tufte’s “The Visual display of Quantitative Information” signed by the author 😦

Apparently the Google Pacman game logo displayed on the site last Friday has cost approximately 5 MILLION work hours! Literally hours of fun.

Proves that plenty of people are still using the google.com website to search, and not just their browser add-ons/built-in search (Or maybe it just shows that the few people who still do, spread the word quickly!)